Drawing on postcolonial studies of management, this article highlights the importance of adopting a contextualized approach to hybridization processes that, first, takes into account the importance of the historical and cultural contexts from which hybridity emerges and, second, helps to identify the elements that change as well as those that persist when western management practices are imported into developing countries. Using a discursive analysis, this article shows the ambivalent nature of the accounts given by managers (trained in western traditions) of the Tunisian company Poulina as they explain how they modernized their company through the implementation of a US management model. The managers’ ambivalence takes on two distinct forms. First, while they seem to have internalized the rhetoric of modernization in insisting on how they used the US management model to overcome the ‘dysfunctional’ family-based organizational system, they simultaneously express resistance by detaching themselves from the French colonial organizational model. Second, when they describe the implementation of the US management practices and how workers resisted them, it seems that they have implicitly negotiated and reinterpreted these practices via a local cultural framework of meaning. Based on these findings, I argue that hybridity is best understood as an interweaving of two elements – the transformation of practices and cultural continuity – in which identity construction, local power dynamics and cultural frameworks of meaning jointly shape the hybridization process of management practices.

FORUM Invited Article CHALLENGING ANGLO-SAXON DOMINANCE IN MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL KNOWLEDGEThe international scene of management and organizational knowledge (MOK) is dominated by concepts, models and theories originated in the Anglo-Saxon World. Such hegemony in the field can be understood as a form of epistemic colonialism, sustained and reproduced by power relations within the academic world (Ibarra-Colado, 2006). It is, then, pertinent to question the desirability of this state of affairs, especially in a scenario of international crisis that is challenging the long established Western global prevalence. The fact of Anglo-Saxon hegemony in MOK is not new, its consequences are clear: the exclusion or subalternization of alternative perspectives originated in other national contexts. It is hard to talk of true "international" context in the discipline if there is a continuing process of hegemony construction that blocks, or at least hinders, the participation of scholars working in non-Anglo-Saxon countries (Alcadipani & Reis Rosa, 2011). The goal of this special forum is to explore whether, and how, this hegemony can be effectively challenged.To gain attention in "international" academia, it is essential to be heard in the Englishspeaking world. Paradoxically, even those who opposed Anglo-Saxon hegemony, or more broadly the hegemony of Western thought, such as the postcolonial theorists, publish their works in English to make them known to a wider audience. An interesting example in this regard is that of the Argentine scholar Walter Mignolo, one of the most prominent theorists of postcolonialism in its Latin Americanist version and professor at Duke University. When asked why he wrote his "The idea of Latin America" in English, being an academic trained in Argentina and France, Mignolo (González, 2006) just answered "in the domain in which the book operates, I suspect there are more Spanish speakers who read English than the other way around". This suggests that the key to success in social sciences is largely the ability to participate in the academic system of the Anglosphere. Would Mignolo have acquired the same theoretical relevance if he had developed his academic career in his native Argentina? It is highly unlikely. Does this mean that scholars from peripheral countries must spend some time working in the Anglosphere, or even their whole academic career there, as did Ernesto Laclau, to effectively spread their ideas?Although there are examples to the contrary -such as Enrique Dussel, an Argentine philosopher currently residing in Mexico and a prominent representative of Latin American social thought; Jacques Rancière, one of the most important French philosophers who offers a radically new conception of emancipation; and, the Mexican organizational theorist Eduardo Ibarra-Colado, the alluring power of the material and symbolic resources (i.e., prestige) provided by Englishspeaking countries, and mainly the U.S. and U.K., is a decisive factor in the construction of the epistemic hegemony of the...

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The postcolonial and decolonial approaches open the way for a rich analysis of the material and cultural conditions in which international management operates, is spread, interpreted, and implemented. They also offer food for thought on the possibilities, tensions, and resistance associated with reinventing alternative organizations more respectful of the dignity of all, while still providing knowledge that is socially and politically useful for oppressed and marginalized groups. Nevertheless, and despite their undeniable contribution to the theoretical development of critical approaches in international management, these perspectives are faced with challenges and difficulties in both intellectual and empirical terms. In this article, I suggest a series of ways forward, which might allow for the renewal of the critical fruitfulness of this intellectual and political project, crucial to face the contemporary challenges of international management.